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THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CALIFORNIA - This site is dedicated to exposing the continuing Marxist Revolution in California and the all around massive stupidity of Socialists, Luddites, Communists, Fellow Travelers and of Liberalism in all of its ugly forms.

"It was a splendid population - for all the slow, sleepy, sluggish-brained sloths stayed at home - you never find that sort of people among pioneers - you cannot build pioneers out of that sort of material. It was that population that gave to California a name for getting up astounding enterprises and rushing them through with a magnificent dash and daring and a recklessness of cost or consequences, which she bears unto this day - and when she projects a new surprise the grave world smiles as usual and says, "Well, that is California all over."

- - - - Mark Twain (Roughing It)

Sunday, February 1, 2015

The Cheap Date That Was California’s 2014 Race for Governor

It’s a headline you almost never see in California politics, and probably won’t see again for a very long time: a landslide win in a statewide election where campaign spending hit a record low.In an era where political campaigns burn cash like a Winnebago guzzles gas, this was a contest won by a campaign that sipped its cash like a Toyota Prius.Final documents filed both by Gov. Jerry Brown and his Republican challenger, Neel Kashkari, show the two men spent almost $13.3 million … combined … on their race for the top job in the nation’s most populous state.Kashkari accounted for slightly more of that spending than the victorious incumbent governor, spending $7.13 million to Brown’s $6.15 million (a small amount of that total was spent in 2013). Official campaign finance documents were filed by both men over the course of the past 24 hours.And it turned out to not be much of a race in the final analysis, with Brown coasting to a 20-percentage-point win on Election Day.Almost half of Kashkari’s campaign cash, $3.1 million, came from the GOP newcomer himself. Brown, who also raised money for a campaign to pass two ballot measures, is still sitting on about $23.4 million between that campaign’s bank account and the one for his re-election. What he’ll do with that money remains the source of a great deal of speculation.The race was never one that dominated the airwaves, which have become a mainstay of competitive California elections. In fact, campaign records show that Kashkari spent most of his money — more than $4 million — just to win the second spot on the fall ballot in the primary campaign against GOP challenger Tim Donnelly.It can be said that the campaign mirrored Gov. Jerry Brown both personally and politically: frugal, spartan, simple. But there’s no mistaking this for what it really was: a surprisingly cheap race.How cheap? A review of campaign finance records and news accounts finds the last time a race for governor cost this little was in 1978, when Jerry Brown won a second term by defeating Republican Evelle Younger. That race was characterized in reports from the era as costing “less than $14 million.”

The chart above shows spending in each regular four-year gubernatorial cycle from 1978 through 2014. The total spending gradually rose for California campaigns from 1986 ($22.5 million) through 1994 ($46.1 million).The race of 2002 was the first big cash bonanza, where Gov. Gray Davis alone spent $78 million. And no race (and maybe no race ever again) will look like the one in 2010, where GOP challenger Meg Whitman spent $178.5 million — most of it her own money — along with almost $37 million spent by Brown.So what did it cost to get the votes? Take the total votes cast and the money spent, and you find the 2014 gubernatorial race cost about $1.81 per vote. That, too, is an amazing piece of data … considering news stories from 1986 calculated the race that year (Gov. George Deukmejian beating Democrat Tom Bradley) at $3.04 per vote.But comparing the 2014 gubernatorial spending with that from 1978 isn’t really fair… to 1978. After all, adjusting for inflation, the final race of the ’70s would have been equal to almost $51 million in campaign spending today.No, a better comparison would be other 2014 races — like the heated contest in Orange County for the 34th state Senate. Total cost, when you tally candidates and independent expenditures: about $11.1 million, close to the Brown-Kashkari battle. And we may see even bigger spending on the statewide level once final campaign reports are filed from the intense fight for state superintendent of public instruction.Bottom line: This was an anomaly of a gubernatorial race, something pointed out late last year in just how few votes were cast (which also broke a record that went back to, wait for it, 1978). The reasons for it? Well, maybe we’ll get some insight on Saturday, when political consultants from both the Brown and Kashkari camp participate in a Q&A election post-mortem at UC Berkeley.

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Paul Gann and Howard Jarvis

Declared "Public Enemies #1 of the People's Republic" for daring to be the Fathers of the modern Taxpayer Revolt in 1978 with Proposition 13 and the Gann Spending Cap. Their crime was to tell the people that they have the right to keep their own money and not turn it over to their Marxist Overlords in Government.

Governor Ronald Reagan

Declared an "Enemy of the People's Republic" for daring to balance the budget, support capitalists, oppose Socialism, create jobs and wealth.

U.S. Senator Richard Nixon

Declared an "Enemy of the People's Republic" for daring from day one in office to vigorously and effectively oppose Communism at home and around the world.

Governor Frank Merriam

Declared an "Enemy of the People's Republic" for daring to send in National Guardsmen armed and with fixed bayonets and machine guns to put down a Communist Longshoreman's strike and for defeating Socialist Upton Sinclair for Governor in 1934.

U.S. Senator George Hearst

Declared an "Enemy of the People's Republic" for daring to show initiative and walk from Missouri to California, for going into farming, business, mining (the Comstock Load), creating wealth with his bare hands out of nothing and providing jobs for the people.

Governor and Senator Leland Stanford

Declared an "Enemy of the People's Republic" for daring to Found the California Republican Party in 1856, build the Central Pacific Railroad, create jobs, businesses and wealth. Founder of Stanford University.

Governor Romualdo Pacheco

Declared an "Enemy of the People's Republic" for supporting ranchers, gold miners and the capitalist creation of wealth and jobs.

U.S. Senator John C. Fremont

Declared an "Enemy of the People's Republic" for daring to support capitalists, gold mining and fight for his country.

About Me

"Stood in firelight, sweltering. Bloodstain on chest like map of violent new continent. Felt cleansed. Felt dark planet turn under my feet and knew what cats know that makes them scream like babies in night.
Looked at sky through smoke heavy with human fat and God was not there. The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever and we are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later. Born from oblivion; bear children, hell-bound as ourselves, go into oblivion. There is nothing else.
Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It is us. Only us.
Streets stank of fire. The void breathed hard on my heart, turning its illusions to ice, shattering them. Was reborn then, free to scrawl own design on this morally blank world. Was Rorschach."
- - - Rorschach, Watchmen (1986)

California Gold Rush (1848 - 1855)

This was a time that is hated with a deep and seething hate by all Socialists, Communists and Statists. During the Gold Rush common men and women sought their fortunes in a new world without the benefit of the wise and learned counsel of overeducated and worthless bureaucrats. People took the task of creating raw wealth into their own hands. No intellectuals were available to lecture the workers about the wonders of the eight hour day, worker's rights, unemployment insurance, workplace rules, "fairness" or early retirement. Intellectuals were neither wanted nor needed because intellectuals do not work for a living. The Intellectual Elite exists to tell everyone how smart they are and how everyone else is doing things wrong. Early California was a place for those who worked for a living.

Central Pacific Railroad

The Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR) is the former name of the railroad network built between California and Utah that formed part of the "First Transcontinental Railroad". It was rapidly built between 1863 - 1869. The "Golden spike", connecting the western railroad to the Union Pacific Railroad at Promontory, Utah, was hammered on May 10, 1869. Coast-to-coast train travel in eight days became possible, replacing months-long sea voyages and lengthy, hazardous travel by wagon trains. This project would never be built today in the Luddite People's Republic. There would be endless delays, environmental impact reports, labor unions, lawyers, court battles and Government Drones blocking every move.

Building the Golden Gate Bridge (1933 - 1937)

Financed and built by California in a record four years. The bridge ranks as one of the great wonders of the world stimulating the economy and creating endless jobs and wealth. Today it would never be built.

The People's Republic of California today

The #1 goal of the all powerful Big Brother State is the Marxist re-distribution of the wealth to the Elite so it can be used to buy votes in the next election. Today jobs and wealth are opposed by the Luddite Socialists because they claim it creates an un-equal society. Modern Californians are living off everything that was built by their ancestors. New projects that might create wealth are furiously opposed by an endless stream of Luddite-Leftist interest groups.

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